Food ‘n Drink

This weekend I decided that I needed to get the Gooseberries in the freezer cooked and dealt with. We’ve had these for ages, but as I don’t really eat them they’ve not been used (they’re only there for David!).

So I asked my mum for her gooseberry streusel recipe, one I can remember her making when I was little. We’ve always had gooseberries, I can remember eating them straight off the bush as a child. We have our own gooseberry bush now which produces a small amount of gooseberries, but my taste seems to have changed as I don’t like them much anymore.

Today I gave the streusel recipe a go. It’s quite a nice light cake and I love the streusel topping, and David said it all tasted good (I can’t comment on the gooseberries! Although I did eat it all ). You can also freeze it whole or cut it into portions/quarters and freeze it for up to 2 months, so I’ve frozen 2 quarters and kept the rest out. It’s quite a moist cake, from the gooseberries, so it doesn’t need any cream or custard, however it can’t be kept for too long else it’ll go mouldy.

Ingredients

Streusel Topping:
150g self raising flour
100g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar

225g gooseberries, topped and tailed

Sponge base:
180g self raising flour
Pinch of salt
125g caster sugar
125g unsalted butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon of milk

Method

Take the streusel ingredients, put the flour and butter into a bowl and rub together until it’s resembling a crumbly mix, add the sugar and continue to rub the mixture together to get your streusel mix (it’s hard to explain but you’ll know when it’s right! Took me about 10 minutes to do!!)

For the sponge base, add the salt into the flour, cream the butter and sugar together, then slowly add the eggs. Add a couple of spoons of flour/salt into the blender/mixer. Then you need to fold in (by hand) the rest of the flour and the milk, until it’s a smooth consistency. In a greased cake tin (I used a 23cm one, ideally you should use a 21cm tin), spoon the cake mixture onto the base and spread out. Then put a single layer of gooseberries onto the mixture, going from the centre out. Try not to have gooseberries on the edge as they’ll probably burn. Then scatter your streusel topping over the gooseberries and try to ensure the gooseberries are covered completely (to prevent burning).

Bake at 180 degrees celsius for 75 minutes. Allow to cool and then store in a cake tin, or freeze.

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A week after sowing my first seeds of the year, my first seedlings have made an appearance! I’ve now got 3 tomato plant seedlings showing through, the first popped up after just 5 days

I’ve also planted some hot chilli plant seeds (scotch bonnet and habanero chillis) that we bought last week to keep David happy.

Whilst out last week we also picked up some packs of potatoes for growing, some red onions and a couple of potato sacks for growing potatoes in. I’ve got 3 types of potatoes, first earlies, second earlies and main crop. I’m hoping that I can time it so that the first earlies can be picked and then the main crop can go into the sack straight after, then plant some more after the second earlies are picked.

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Following on from my post last week about my new propogator, this weekend I finally got the time to get my first set of seeds on the go. At present we’ve got dwarf beans and courgettes going in peat pots, and then chillis, leeks and tomatoes in the seed tray. The propogator is a nice decent size and should allow the seedlings to grow up to the right height before getting moved outside.

We also went out to another local garden centre yesterday (I love these places!) to see if they had any scotch bonnet chilli seeds. Whilst there I also picked up a couple of potato grow bags (deep bags with a slit on the side) and 3 different types of potatoes which’ll be ready at varying times throughout the summer and the main crop (King Edwards) should keep a fair while (whether they last that long or not who knows!). We won’t get a massive amount of potatoes I doubt but it does mean we can get a few crops going.

I checked on my garlic yesterday too and all 6 cloves that I planted are now showing shoots, even the one that the squirrel dug up!

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Continuing my weekend batch cooking today I did 5 double portions of crumble (although only 4 made it to the freezer!). This is really quick and simple to do. I freeze them in foil dishes with the cardboard lids (can get from most kitchen shops and possibly supermarkets too) so that you can take them straight out and cook from defrosted or frozen.

I usually use frozen blackberries and raspberries as I get loads off my parents in the autumn and they’re great for all sorts of desserts.

Ingredients

1 cooking apple
1 dessert apple
3 handfuls of blackberries
2 handfuls of raspberries
100g plain flour
20g brown caster sugar
30g dark muscavado sugar
40g butter or margarine

Method

Peel, core and slice both apples. Put into a large pyrex bowl, add a teaspoon of water and put into the microwave for about 3 minutes to soften the apples. If freezing, divide the apples into foil dishes at this point. Add the blackberries and raspberries.

In a mixer or food processor mix the flour, sugar and butter until fine. If it gets a bit lumpy/gloopy just add a little more flour (this can happen if the butter/margarine is soft). The cover the fruit in the crumble topping.

Cook at 180 degrees celcius for 35 minutes (25-30 minutes for smaller portions). Serve with custard, cream or icecream.

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After watching The Hairy Bikers – Mums Know Best, and seeing them make fish cakes it reminded me that I’d been wanting to try making my own for ages. David always used to say he didn’t like fish cakes as they tasted like hot cotton wool (that’s what he refers to for mash potato!), however I love fish cakes but the tasty ones can cost over £3 for 2!!

So today I decided to give them a go. It was a joint effort and for the first attempt we were quite chuffed with the outcome as they were really nice (“best fish cakes I’ve ever had” from David!). The next plan is to add this to my bulk cooking list, so make up a batch of them and freeze them. At this rate I’ll have a home-made frozen ready meal for every day of the week!

On to the recipe, these are the quantities we used, of course a fillet of fish and two potatoes won’t always weigh in the same ratio, but hey, it’s all cooked and it’s all edible, so adjust the quantities to suit your own tastes

Ingredients

1 fillet of smoked haddock, skinned and boned
2 potatoes (aim to have around 50% more of potato than fish)
6 spring onion finely chopped
Grated cheddar cheese
2 eggs
Fresh breadcrumbs (3 slices of white bread blended to breadcrumbs)
Plain flour
Milk
Butter/Margarine

Method

Boil the potatoes, drain and pat dry. Then mash (don’t add any milk or butter!) and allow to cool slightly. Add the spring onion and a few handfuls of grated cheddar and mix into the mash potato. Poach the fish in milk, either in a pan or in the microwave. To use the microwave put the fish into a Pyrex dish, add milk until it’s partially covered, then cover with cling film. Put on high for 3 minutes. Remove fish from dish but keep the milk. Pat the fish dry, flake and fold into the mashed potato mixture along with a beaten egg. Form into round shapes.

Beat the second egg and pour into a bowl. Put the breadcrumbs on a plate and some flour in another bowl. Take each fish cake, dip it in the flour, then in the egg and then in the breadcrumbs. Once they’re all done heat some oil in a frying pan and add the fish cakes. Fry until the breadcrumbs are golden brown all over.

We then put them on a baking tray into the oven on a 150 deg C heat to keep warm (you may need higher if you don’t have a fan oven).

Then I also made a simple cheese sauce to go with them by melting about a teaspoon of butter in a saucepan, adding about 2 teaspoons of flour, mixing it in to the melted butter, then the milk from the pyrex dish and a couple of handfuls of cheese. Sorry, no real measurements as I just go by the consistency and taste, but all good cookbooks should tell you how to make a simple cheese sauce.

These quantities made 6 large fish cakes in total

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